


now here i am (i'm a drop in your ocean)

by theagonyofblank



Category: Actor RPF, Pitch Perfect (2012), Real Person Fiction
Genre: F/F, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, I Don't Even Know, Romantic Friendship, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 15:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theagonyofblank/pseuds/theagonyofblank
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna has a really dark, dry sense of humour, and Brittany doesn’t really get it half of the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now here i am (i'm a drop in your ocean)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this video here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVP7r3uKr44). Title is from The Temper Trap’s “Trembling Hands.”

Brittany Snow is not a cheater. This is what you have to know.

 

-

The thing is, Brittany _likes_ Ryan.

She’s liked him since their first date – since he made her laugh at something she now can’t remember, since he took her mind off the awful things she was going through at the time. He’s a great boyfriend: he’s nice, funny, and to top it all off, he cooks (which is really important, because Brittany can’t cook to save her life).

Basically, he’s a godsend and a sweetheart.

Everything with him is _easy_ , and she wonders when that stopped being enough.

 

 

-

She first notices that something’s off her second month on the set of _Pitch Perfect_.

Nothing with Ryan – Ryan’s great.

He visits her on-set, meets her fellow actors, takes her out to dinner.

When he leaves, she finds she misses him, but not like she used to.

(She goes to Anna’s – Anna Kendrick’s – trailer anyway, and she lets her in without a word. They spend the rest of the evening watching _Pretty Woman_ and _Dirty Dancing_ , and when Anna asks if she wants to talk about it, she shrugs her head no.

By the end of the night, she has her head in Anna’s lap, and she feels marginally better).

 

-

Anna – Camp – is a huge goofball.

She makes her laugh; makes everyone laugh, actually. Everyone thinks Rebel’s the funny one – and she is, she’s a hoot and a half – but Anna is a different kind of funny. More silly, she guesses. If Brittany were to date anyone based on their “funniness factor,” well, she thinks Anna Camp or Rebel would be right up there with Ryan.

Anna – and she’s talking about Kendrick now – has a really dark, dry sense of humour, and Brittany doesn’t really get it half of the time.

By the time they start doing press for the movie, she’s internally wincing every time Anna opens her mouth to answer a question.

 

(She wonders why the producers stuck them together; it’s not that she doesn’t like Anna – she does. She just never knows how to handle herself when Anna’s around, can’t explain the nervousness in her veins, can only start murmuring quiet apologies _for_ Anna when she makes a joke).

 

-

The point is, she would never date Anna Kendrick.

 

-

They mesh well. She thinks they mesh well.

They’re far from best friends; they never did have another movie night, and she feels more comfortable, less jittery, with Rebel and Hana and Ester and other-Anna (which – she guesses if Anna _Camp_ is “other-Anna”, then that should tell her something), but they _click_.

They sit next to each other at cast dinners, have some inside jokes only the two of them are privy to.

It’s… not nothing, to say the least.

 

-

She goes over to Anna’s place for dinner exactly once.

“This is…”

“…terrible?” Anna fills in for her, sheepish.

They’re sitting on the couch with some infomercial on, and Brittany has just taken a bite of what she guesses is supposed to be noodles. Of some kind.

Brittany makes a face. “Didn’t you cook, in that one movie?”

“I also DJed, in that one movie,” comes the dry reply, and Brittany rolls her eyes. Then Anna adds, “It’s called _acting_ , Snow. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I also almost chopped off my finger while taking a cooking class. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this. ‘Oh, it’s fine, Anna,’ you said. ‘I’m sure it’s edible,’ you said.”

“That was before I tasted your food!” Brittany laughs, swatting Anna’s hands away as she stretches to tickle her. “I didn’t think it was possible to find a worse cook than me.”

“Maybe next time you’ll believe me when I say, ‘I can’t cook,’” Anna grumbles as she reaches for the Chinese take-out menu, but her face breaks into a smile so large that Brittany’s stomach drops, and just… yeah. Maybe it’s better not to think about what that means.

 

-

“You’re so weird,” she says to Anna once – multiple times, actually.

“And you love me for it,” is always Anna’s response, easy and with a wink.

 

-

(Love is a very strong word –

she uses it for things like ice cream, the beach, and her puppy –

but one day, in the far, far future, she thinks it might be appropriate).

 

-

“Please go out with me.”

They’re in the middle of an interview, and _of course_ Anna is in love with her. Again.

(No matter how many times Anna claims this, it doesn’t stop Brittany’s heart from speeding up double-time).

Brittany barely suppresses the urge to roll her eyes, instead settling for shaking her head at the interviewer. She doesn’t even have to look at Anna to know that the brunette is grinning from ear to ear.

Her response is the same: A dry, clipped (but not unkind, or so she likes to think, anyway), “I can’t.”

 

-

It makes her wonder, though, when her answer changed from _will not_ to _cannot._

 

-

Things with Ryan fizzle out shortly after Thanksgiving.

It ends just like it started – easily – and Brittany is relieved.

Sophia wonders if she should be more upset, but Brittany just says, “There was nothing to be upset about. I’m okay, Sophia.”

And she is.

(She doesn’t tell Anna. She doesn’t know _why_ she doesn’t, rationalizes it as a need-to-know kind of thing and Anna definitely doesn’t need to know).

 

-

She spends Christmas with her family, and when she gets back, she meets up with friends – Skylar, Ester, Sophia – but never Anna.

(“Anna asked about you the other day,” Hana tells her once, over the phone, and Brittany makes a noncommittal noise.

She keeps up with Anna through Twitter, but saying that out loud seems pathetic, so she doesn’t).

 

-

She bumps into Anna at the gym at the turn of the new year.

“Please don’t tell me that’s a spinach shake,” is the first thing Anna says to her.

“Avocado,” Brittany replies, smiling.

“I don’t know if that’s more or less appetizing.”

Brittany rolls her eyes – she’s always speechless around Anna, and she wishes she could fix herself _– gosh, just_ _be a functioning person, Brittany! –_ but Anna doesn’t seem to notice. Or if she does, she doesn’t seem to mind.

 

-

They start hanging out again after that.

Trips to the gym, to the beach, or just to grab a quick coffee together.

They even show up to Alexis’ housewarming party together. (Anna walks around the entire evening announcing that Brittany is her date, and her date is _like, the hottest, ever_ – and Brittany has no idea which she wants to do more: roll her eyes and smack Anna, or smile and let her heart do that flip-flop thing it’s apt to do when Anna’s around.

Her life is _so_ difficult).

 

-

She’s not sure they’re actually dating – she’s pretty sure they’re not, even if Anna’s only like that with her – though they get teased about it sometimes.

She’s okay with that, though.

 

-

It’s a warm sunny day, and Anna decides it’s the perfect day for shopping. She drags Brittany along – who’s convinced it’s a better day for sitting around and lazing about – saying that she’s incapable of setting foot into a store without her BFF, thank you very much, and after about ten minutes of back-and-forth arguing, Brittany gives in. Because she’s never been able to say no to Anna, and she’s not about to start now.

They’re sitting down sipping their smoothies – a reward for successful shopping – when Anna speaks, “You’re never going to talk about it, are you?”

“Talk about what?” Brittany asks, confused.

“Ryan. You. Not being together.”

Brittany laughs, putting down her plastic cup. “Really? That’s what you want to talk about?”

“Well,” Anna starts, and if Brittany didn’t know better, she’d say Anna sounded hurt. “You never said anything after it happened, and you’ve never mentioned him since.”

“There’s not much to say,” Brittany says honestly, idly twirling her straw in her cup. “And anyway,” she grins, bumping Anna’s shoulder with her own. “I have you now.”

Anna smiles. “Oh, do you now?”

Her heart’s racing again, and they haven’t _actually_ talked about this – about them, and this strange more-than-friendship – but Brittany has never felt more confident than she feels in this moment.

“Yes. Yes I do.”

 

-

(Later that evening, after their first kiss, Anna will say, “You know that was like, really vague, right? What if I had pushed you away and said, ‘Sorry, BFFs only’?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“But what if—“)

 

-

No one has asked her (yet), but Brittany thinks the best thing about dating Anna Kendrick is knowing exactly how to shut her up.

 

-


End file.
